Outside of the Singapore International Piano Festival, the Singapore Symphony group does not often present piano recitals, but this one was an exception. French pianist Hélène Grimaud, who joined the orchestra on tour to Japan, followed up her performance of Ravel’s G major piano concerto with a solo recital of repertoire which Artur Schnabel described as “better than could be performed”.
Quite unusually, she performed the two halves of her recital on two different Steinway Ds. The first was a fire engine red beast, famously played by Lang Lang in Singapore’s 60th anniversary mega-concert to a crowd of thousands at the National Stadium in 2015. The recital began with Beethoven’s late Piano Sonata no. 30 in E major, Op.109, a reading liberal with pedalling, coaxing a luscious sonority with much reverberance. There was no disguising that Beethoven had ushered in the Romantic era, a paradigm progression from his early sonatas influenced by Haydn and Mozart. The Prestissimo central movement was delivered with vehemence, and the finale’s Theme and Variations was distinguished by a beautifully voiced chorale theme. This was followed by some of Beethoven’s most inventive writing, looking ahead to the corresponding movement of his final sonata (Op.111), with resonating trills and the freewheeling approach of a jazzman.
Some seventy years separated autumnal Beethoven (1822) from late Brahms (1892) but no one would have guessed. Grimaud’s inclusion of two sets of the latter’s piano pieces contrasted Apollo with Dionysus. The Three Intermezzi, Op.117, were his “lullabies of grief”, the hymn-like simplicity of the E flat major first then turning into the darker shades of the B flat minor second. The smouldering disquiet generated by Grimaud was gripping, with no relief provided in the even more solemn C sharp minor third. The opening bare octaves were reminiscent of Gregorian chant, then into evolving into rich harmonies which were quintessential Brahms.